Chris Worth works on a commisioned portrait of a couple who are active in the local disability-rights community.

Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio

All artists use their unique abilities and experiences in their work. Chris Worth is no different.

But Worth’s art is informed by a more complicated set of realities than most. Born in Connecticut along with a twin brother, Worth was diagnosed at birth with cerebral palsy. When he was 1, his mother had a stroke.

At first, a family friend cared for him. After that, he bounced through several foster families and an educational system that put him on a path toward unskilled labor. At 11, he was adopted by a West Virginia couple who saw his potential as a student and artist.

But even in a stable home, he was confused by his attractions toward women and men, an orientation for which he now uses the word “queer.” "Disabled" is the one-word description he prefers in talking about his cerebral palsy. They're part of a long list of identities folded his art.

“I also have tons of privilege as a white man, and I’m sort of wrestling with that privilege,” said Worth, 40. “But I was also in foster care, so that kind of struggle that I had up until I was 11 impacts how I'm going to approach what stories I want to tell.”

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St. Louis Public Radio’s Nancy Fowler visits with artist Chris Worth and his partner Julie Salih in their south St. Louis home.

‘I cried a lot’

Worth’s cerebral palsy makes painting a more deliberate process than it is for many other artists.

“I literally have to convince my arm to make a mark,” Worth said. “And sort of the positioning of the wheelchair might also impact how I reach out with the brush.”

He began painting at 6, fascinated by a new set of watercolors and what his sometimes-unpredictable hands could create. At 12, he began painting with oils. But when he began college at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, some of his art professors said he’d never make it because of his disability.

“Honestly, I cried a lot. I stayed after class longer than most people; I lived in the studio,” Worth said. “And I relied on the people who supported me.”

Chris Worth was inspired early on by the vibrancy of watercolors then oils.

Credit Provided | Chris Worth

Worth earned a bachelor’s degree and then a masters.

These days, for critical input, he sometimes turns to his life partner Julie Salih, who is visually impaired but has a good eye for shapes. They share a direct style of communication.

“I might say, 'Literally, it looks like a black blob,’” Salih said.

Worth rarely holds back in his replies, sometimes telling Salih that the problem is she “can’t see it.” But he appreciates her input.

“I know that if she can see at least a part of what I'm trying to convey, then I'm doing an excellent job,” Worth said.

Red ties and real power

Besides making art, Worth works as a team manager at Paraquad, an agency that provides services for people with disabilities, including connecting them with in-home care, housing and employment.

The strength of clients' collective efforts recently inspired him to examine ideas about power, in a series called the Red Tie Series. The red ties represent hyper-masculinity and the historical dominance of men over women.

Worth's Red Tie series of paintings examines the psychological framework that society assigns to symbols.

Credit Provided | Chris Worth

“In this series, I’m laying bare that what we think of as real power is really oppression,” Worth said. “Real power lies in … being able to come together.”

In one of 17 paintings, a female figure stands behind a male one, sewing his abdomen with needle and thread, as if to place a heart — a very small one — into his body.

“His eyes are sort of rolling back in the back of his head, like he’s either like being healed or his life force is being taken away,” Worth said. “A red tie is flung from him all the way over her shoulder, so in a way, it’s playing a very physical role in making the transference of power.”

‘Just want to keep doing it’

Worth said he often has a clear vision of what he's going to paint before he ever picks up brush to begin.

Credit Carolina Hidalgo | St. Louis Public Radio

Worth has a unique style, according to St. Louis artist and art educator Gina Alvarez, who curated his work for an exhibition at the Regional Arts Commission.

“The way he places figures in space, the way he uses color to kind of … manage those figures in space and create some sort of sense of atmosphere are what drew me to his work,” Alvarez said.

“When he gets the opportunity to paint someone or tell a story about someone in his life, we get to see a tenderness that is only felt through the painting that he makes,” said Alvarez, executive director of VSA Missouri, an organization dedicated to the arts and people with disabilities.

Worth, a former president of VSA’s board of directors, is currently exhibiting in a show at his college alma mater and has about 100 works in private, individual collections. He looks forward to the day he can earn more of his income from making art.

While planning for the 20th anniversary of the Sheldon Art Galleries, director Olivia Lahs-Gonzales and her team could have looked to the past, drawing material for this fall’s exhibits from hundreds of retrospective possibilities. But they opted to celebrate the future instead.

“I thought, ‘What better way – since we serve our community – [than] to focus on our immigrant communities and celebrate them and show all of the range of contributions and the issues that surround [immigration], especially in today’s world?’” Lahs-Gonzales said Thursday on St. Louis on the Air. “I think it was really fitting to kind of look out, forward, rather than looking backward.”

She joined host Don Marsh alongside Miriam Ruiz, community programs manager for the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, and Colin McLaughlin, musical director for Bread & Roses Missouri, to discuss how the Sheldon and other artistically inclined entities and individuals are deepening St. Louisans' understanding of social issues in creative ways.